Chiefs try it again

SAM MELLINGER The Kansas City Star

Thursday

Feb 28, 2013 at 12:01 AMFeb 28, 2013 at 1:00 PM

John Dorsey met his wife in Kansas City. They had barbecue on the Country Club Plaza, a poetically Kansas City way to fall in love. When he became the Chiefs' general manager last month, he called it his dream job.

He knows Kansas City. Now he's learning about its fans.

Judged in a vacuum, the Chiefs made themselves better yesterday. That's Dorsey's job, to make the football team better. Matt Cassel and Brady Quinn tag-teamed an awful quarterback situation for the Chiefs last season, and Dorsey knew he had to fix this before addressing anything else.

Trading for Alex Smith — who took the 49ers within a whisker of the Super Bowl two years ago and was the league's leading passer when he got hurt last year — makes the Chiefs better. To win games in 2013, this was the Chiefs' best available option. Dorsey is a football man, and winning is his main concern.

What Dorsey couldn't have known is that the baggage Chiefs fans come by honestly means one of the most important decisions that he and new Coach Andy Reid will ever make here cannot be judged in a vacuum. Impossible.

Chiefs fans have been in an emotionally abusive relationship with quarterbacks since beloved Hall of Famer Len Dawson retired in 1975. They want nothing more than for Smith to win a championship here, but they've seen their team fail too many times, with too many other teams' backups, to be universally thrilled by yesterday's news.

In a football sense, trading this year's second-round pick and a conditional pick next year for Smith is logical. The Chiefs have the first choice in April's NFL Draft, but no amount of desperation or references about Todd Blackledge being the last homegrown quarterback to win a game for the Chiefs is going to turn rookie-to-be Geno Smith into Andrew Luck. There are no great options for teams needing quarterback help in this draft.

Dorsey was in the Green Bay Packers' circle of trust when they used a first-round pick on Aaron Rodgers despite Brett Favre still being a star. Reid used his first pick with the Philadelphia Eagles on Donovan McNabb but still drafted five more quarterbacks — and added Michael Vick on a free-agent contract — to fortify the position.

Scott Pioli brought Cassel to Kansas City and stuck with him too long. There is nothing in Dorsey's and Reid's disposition or track record to suggest they have somehow contracted a Piolian level of commitment to the franchise's new import quarterback.

Except that's not how yesterday's trade was received by a large chunk of the new leadership's constituency. This is a fiercely passionate fan base that often expects the worst, especially from its quarterbacks, and they've seen this movie before: San Francisco Quarterback Comes to KC, Part Four.

Yes, this is the fourth time a quarterback has come to the Chiefs directly from the 49ers. That total includes one of the greatest players in league history, Joe Montana, who took the Chiefs within a win of the Super Bowl after the 1993 season. The other two were mostly forgettable: Steve Bono and Elvis Grbac.

Smith's limitations will be talked about more than his potential. He is a borderline brilliant man — graduated with an economics degree in 2½ years while playing college football — who nearly set the NFL's record for completion percentage last year. But he is also injury-prone, and now he'll be playing in a system that will likely have him taking more hits.

Smith is especially accurate on short and intermediate routes, but the team that knows him best discarded him at the first opportunity for what was then a second-year backup who hadn't proved anything.

In the end, Smith is an upgrade from what the Chiefs had and anything else they were likely to get for 2013. The most clear-headed take is that Smith is an improvement in the short-term and uninspiring in the long-term and is costing too much for the risk.

But the bigger problem for Dorsey and Reid is they are effectively rerunning the same script in Kansas City that's about to observe a 20-year anniversary since the Chiefs' last playoff win. They are taking fans on the same date that's ended up in tears so many times before.

That's not Dorsey's or Reid's fault, and probably not even something they should be concerned with. But it is something they'll have to deal with in their new hometown.

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